I researched a piece about culture wars a few years ago and learned that culture war in Britain doesn’t really exist. It is incited, it is dreamt of and exploited, but it is essentially a fiction. British people are a kaleidoscope of opinion, not two sides staring over an abyss. That is the US, not here.
The data on culture war comes from Bobby Duffy, professor of public policy at King’s College, London, and he has a new report about attitudes to immigration. You would do better to listen to Duffy than to many journalists and politicians. It is a frightening time: Lee Anderson, a new deputy chair of the Tory party, calls people arriving in small boats “criminals”. People emboldened by this rhetoric stand outside hotels housing asylum seekers, shout slogans and set fires. They aren’t far-Right, say the credulous — or malicious. Then who is? Of course, Patriotic Alternative, who are leading the campaign of harassment, are far-Right, and, if these journalists and politicians left their offices for Skegness or Knowsley they might realise it.
